


Look To Your Left

by Poetry



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Drabble Sequence, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-17
Updated: 2010-02-17
Packaged: 2017-10-07 08:18:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Private reflections on eyelessness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Look To Your Left

**I. Depth Perception**

It isn't just that his left side is shrouded in darkness. The world is flatter now; things are more distant than he expects them to be. In his hospital bed, when he first reached out for Willow, his hand grasped at empty air. The haunted, pinched look on her face seemed closer than his heartbeat, but he reminded himself that it wasn't as near as he thought.

By now, it doesn't trouble him. Xander's grown accustomed to the world being so flat and close. He feels sorry for everyone else, the ones who float adrift through oceans of empty space.

 

  


**II. Field of Vision**

People see Xander, but they don't look.

He's used to it by now: first there's a glance to the patch covering his empty eye socket, then it skitters away. Only the demons and vampires seem to really look. It took a while for Xander to be able to look back. In the beginning, when he'd only just stepped into the shadows, he hoped that what he saw out of the corners of his eyes wouldn't be quite so real. By now he's learned.

Everyone looks at the world through a narrow window. His is just a little narrower than most.

 

  


**III. Blind Spot **

Xander has strategies for when he's searching for newly called Slayers. In the more dangerous parts of Africa, he needs protection from powerful women, just as he always has. He brings three Slayers as backup: one on his right, two on his left.

At first, he had nightmares that his friends would look to the void on his left and run from some threat he couldn't see, leaving him behind. He assumed that there were always monsters on the left.

But in real life, they stand at his side, looking out for him, and together, they are his left eye.

 

  


**IV. Brightness and Contrast**

"The Slayer Organization can pay for a glass eye from its finances, if you would like one," says Giles.

Xander considers the advantages: no black cloth like a gap in his face, no fearful glances from strangers. No outward sign of what he had lost.

The eyepatch makes him look tough and grizzled and worn, like something he isn't. A glass eye would fill that empty space with warm brown. But glass is cool and hard to the touch, and it breaks easily under pressure, just as his real eye had.

"Thanks, Giles," says Xander, "but I think I'll pass."


End file.
